“No.”
Ron looked back at the altar. “Any evidence of sexual activity?”
“Nothing jumps out on first blush, but I’ll know more once we get her to the lab.”
Ron tilted his head and peered into the rafters. “Has anyone been up there yet?”
“No reason to.”
“Might want to get a tech to check it.”
Amy moved closer to Ron and followed his gaze into the gloom. “What do you see?”
“Let’s get a light. But first, have your people go over the scaffolding and dust for prints. I don’t want to disturb anything.”
Amy called out to her techs and they came at a trot. She gave them instructions and they went to work, leaving Amy and Ron to get flashlights from the van. Upon their return, he directed his beam toward the high ceiling. The light played along the carved figures that looked down upon the pews, and stopped at an object that was conspicuously out of place.
A human head, positioned so it was staring at the altar.
Amy gasped. “Okay, tell me this isn’t freaking you out, just a little.”
Ron didn’t say anything.
His phone rang and he reached for it, his eyes never leaving the grisly memento above. A muscle in Ron’s jaw pulsed as he ground his teeth. “Stanford,” he answered.
“Another video just hit,” Ben said.
“At least he’s consistent. You watch it yet?”
“No. One of the networks sent it over only a few minutes ago.”
“I’ll need some more time here before I can join you.”
“I’ll make popcorn.”
Ron didn’t chuckle at the grim humor. “He left the head.”
Ben sounded surprised. “Really? Where?”
Ron described the scene. When he was finished, both men were quiet.
Ben finally broke the silence. “The captain wants you here ASAP, Ron. He’s coming into the office to meet.”
Ron sighed and looked to where Amy was standing. “Another marathon, huh?”
Ben grunted agreement. “See you when you get here.”
Chapter 6
Hitoshi Sato sat on an emergency room exam table as a nurse leaned over him, picking shards of glass from the numerous wounds that covered his body. Sato’s head was swathed in a bandage, his hair singed off by the flames; only his eyebrows and eyelashes remained, protected by the fireproof strip he’d tied over them before his self-immolation. The nurse, a Filipino woman in her forties, worked in silence, the only sound in the area the clink of another glass fragment landing in the metal pan by her side.
Sato endured the process, one that he knew would be a long one from his prior forays into extreme performance art. His body was covered with small scars from the other time he’d tried a similar act, with equally painful results. But he’d been considerably younger then, in his hometown of Tokyo, and had healed relatively quickly compared to what he was sure he’d endure this time.
Still, it had been worth it. He’d been paid two hundred thousand dollars for five minutes of his life – well worth the misery he was currently enduring.
A young doctor entered the room and eyed him like something stuck to the bottom of his shoe before making a note on his clipboard and fixing Sato with a hard stare.
“You’re lucky you’re alive.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Sato agreed.
“Do you think this is funny? You’ve got burns on over forty percent of your body, and we’ve flushed enough crap from your wounds to pollute half New York Harbor. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I’m an artist. Things got carried away. It wasn’t intentional.”
“You could die of sepsis. You could go into shock from the burns. And those are the tame possibilities.”
“I understand.” Sato indeed did. He’d used alcohol in the belief that it would act as an antiseptic, killing the worst of the bacteria when he’d poured it over himself, with the flames destroying the rest. “Do you have some sort of antibiotic you can give me so I don’t get infected?”
The doctor shook his head. “You think a shot is all you need? I’ve recommended you for a psych evaluation. In cases like these, it’s policy.”
“I’m quite sane, I assure you.”
“I’m not going to be the judge of that. I will, however, point out that it’s hardly sane to roll around in broken glass and human waste, and then set yourself on fire.”
“I told you, the fire was an accident. I was using the alcohol to–”
“Yes, Mr. Sato, I know what you said. You can explain it to my colleague when she arrives shortly.” The doctor eyed the nurse. “How’s it going?”
“Another hour, at least. Maybe more.”
The physician looked at Sato. “You want something for the pain?”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s a miracle that you didn’t fry your genitals off.”
“As I said, I’m a lucky man.” The truth was that Sato had used an ointment that retarded the flames just long enough for the extinguisher to come into play, as he had with his face. The results were less than stellar, admittedly, but better than nothing. He’d also done most of the damage with the glass and tacks to his back and chest, avoiding all but a few painful cuts on his private parts.
“The police will also be having a word with you shortly.”
“Yes, I’m sure they will. But I’ve committed no crime.”
“You almost killed yourself.”
Sato raised an eyebrow. “Is it illegal to be stupid now? Half the city must be behind bars.” He glanced down at his lacerations. “I would appreciate antibiotics.”
The doctor shook his head. “I honestly don’t get it. You’ve obviously done this before. What could possibly drive you to repeat the experience?”
Sato looked away, his face an unreadable mask. “It is my art.”
“Rolling around in feces and glass.”
“Art must disturb to make us think.”
“Well, Mr. Sato, we agree on one thing: this is beyond disturbing.” The physician regarded Sato’s arms and legs. “I see you have a number of collapsed veins and recent track marks.”
“It is a constant struggle to beat my demons.”
“There are treatment programs.”
“I prefer to deal with my issues in my own way.”
The doctor held up his clipboard. “Suit yourself. I’ll be back shortly with your shot and a prescription. You’ll need to be on the meds for at least two weeks, and will have to stay out of the sun and avoid drinking alcohol.”
“After this recent experience, I can assure you I’ll do both. Thank you for your patience, Doctor. I don’t expect you to understand my art, but I appreciate your staff’s tending to me.”
“It’s our job.”
“Yes, well, this is mine.”
Sato watched the man leave and felt a small kinship with him. He was working graveyard – a thankless shift dealing with gunshot wounds, car accident victims, end-stage alcoholism, and sexual adventures gone awry. He did hard duty for too little pay, working in a system that chewed his kind up and spit them out without a second thought.
He grimaced in pain as the nurse burrowed into a particularly deep laceration with her forceps and sucked in a sharp breath as she flushed the wound with saline. Sato forced his heart rate back to its usual slow rhythm and composed himself. The woman was thorough; the lower part of his body had taken two hours to clean. The worst of the damage was superficial – the glass was small enough so that it had mostly resulted in flesh wounds, which looked horrific but weren’t terminal. The nails were largely harmless, more for show, and the tacks left easily healed puncture wounds.
“Sorry. This is a bad one,” the nurse apologized.
“No problem. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You sure you don’t want some local anesthetic?” she asked. “It will help.
He shook his head. “My body is a temple.”
The woman choked back a snicker and continued working with the mechanical regularity of a robot. “Suit yourself,” she said.
Sato closed his eyes and willed himself to a remote reach of his consciousness, where pain couldn’t find him and he could recharge his badly depleted resources in peace.
Fifteen minutes later, the young doctor returned with a syringe and administered the antibiotic. He eyed Sato’s back and shook his head and then left without a word. Sato waited a few moments before telling the nurse that he needed to use the restroom. She offered him a paper gown, which he pulled on with a wince, and then donned his shoes and made for the bathroom at the end of the ER hall, leaving the bloody tracksuit he’d arrived in on a chair beside the nurse for company.
Once at the bathroom door, he looked around to confirm nobody was watching him. Satisfied he hadn’t attracted any attention, he continued past the restroom and ducked into a stairwell on his right.
Sato took the steps two at a time, anxious to get as far from the hospital as possible now that he’d had his shot. His assistant would be able to remove the rest of the glass and was waiting for him with a bag of clothes in the chapel on the second floor of the hospital. With any luck he’d be gone by the time the nurse sounded the alarm, and the police would be left scratching their heads at his disappearance. It was unlikely that they’d do much else, given that nobody besides him had been hurt. The fools would fill out a report, laugh about it over donuts, and go on with their business while Sato recovered at his skid row hotel.
Two hundred grand richer.
He shook his head at the thought.
What a country.
Chapter 7
The morning sun warmed Tess’s skin as she looked up at her father’s pre-war building, shielding her eyes with her hand. In the street before her, taxis roared past her at suicidal speed, horns blaring as rush hour drew to a close. She watched the approaching traffic and timed her sprint across, calculating with the skill acquired from two years of the daily grind as a bicycle messenger, before her father’s death had changed everything in her world.
She made it with seconds to spare as a delivery truck rumbled by, and approached the building entrance, carrying her half-drunk cup of coffee in one hand and a file in the other. The doorman watched her near with a smile and nodded to her as he held the door open.
“Morning, Miss Gideon. Awful shame about your father,” he said.
Tess nodded, her lips a thin line. “Thanks, Steven. He’s definitely missed.”
“My condolences.”
She knew the man from her regular visits, but didn’t want to spend any more time in conversation than she could help. Tess checked her watch and glanced at the front door. “I’m going up to my dad’s apartment. I’m expecting someone in about half an hour. Claire Simons. Could you buzz me when she gets here?”
“Of course, Miss Gideon. Claire Simons. Got it.”
The elevator lurched to the eighth floor, and Tess exhaled softly as the door slid open. The sight of the long hall was familiar and yet strangely foreign, as though she were seeing it in a dream. The sense of surrealism continued as she approached the apartment and felt in her pocket for the keys.
This was the first time she had been there since his murder three months earlier. Tess’s hand trembled as she slid the key into the deadbolt and twisted it open with a snick. She took a deep breath and steeled herself for what was to come, and then pushed the heavy wooden slab wide, unsure what she would find but determined to go through with her foray no matter what.
She wrinkled her nose at the odor of decay and made her way to the nearest window. Motes of dust danced in a sunbeam streaming through the curtains, and she coughed. Holding her breath, she slid the drapes apart and hoisted the window open, the wooden frame groaning in protest. She moved to the next and repeated her maneuver until fresh air poured into the apartment, accompanied by a din from the street below.
The apartment was impeccably clean, as she remembered; but when she moved into the kitchen, her worst fears were confirmed by a look in the refrigerator, which had transformed into a science experiment in the months since it had last been opened. She rooted around beneath the sink for gloves and went to work, filling three oversized green plastic bags, which she toted to the garbage chute and dropped into the abyss.
When she returned, she did a slow inspection, room by room, and stopped at the threshold of her old bedroom – she and her sister had grown up in that small space, and she wondered how she’d react to being back after so long. She opened the door, but instead of seeing their beds and the familiar chest of drawers by the window, found herself facing a dozen cardboard file boxes, labeled in her father’s neat script, his spare wheelchair beside them.
Next was her parents’ bedroom – since her mother had passed away, her father’s exclusive domain. The door was ajar, which made sense given her father’s infirmity, and she approached it hesitantly, as though walking on eggshells.
Once inside, she made for the windows and opened them, and then turned to where her father’s bed occupied much of the room. The sheets were still rumpled from his last night at home. Tess hesitated at the headboard before brushing past to the bathroom, swallowing a golf-ball-sized knot in her throat as she did so.
The sight of her father’s razor and toothbrush laid out, awaiting a return that would never happen, was like a punch to the gut, and against all her resolve, tears streamed down her cheeks at the simple reminder that he was gone for good. She stood in the smallish bathroom, looking at his towel draped on a hook and the specially installed bars and seat for handicapped access to the shower, and suddenly the walls seemed to be closing in. She slid down the wall and sat on the tile floor, sobbing uncontrollably, her shoulders heaving as she gasped for air.
Minutes passed and the wave of anguish slowly faded, replaced by a cold numbness that started in the center of her churning guts and spread outward. She forced herself to her feet and blotted her face with her shirtsleeve, and after flushing the toilet and opening the small window for ventilation, went back to the living room.
A row of photographs in silver frames on the shelves of a tall bookcase at the far end of the room caught her attention and she moved toward them, her steps wooden. There were her mother and father in better days, beaming at the camera from a vacation aboard a cruise on the Danube, before she’d succumbed to complications arising from multiple sclerosis and he’d been struck by a drunk driver crossing the street. Another even older, with the happy family together at the holidays, Tess a gangly twelve years old, her sister two years older, looking nothing like either Tess or her mother. More Tess at her sixth or seventh birthday, the photo slightly yellowed from time, and at eighteen, frowning at the camera with the incredible seriousness of budding adulthood, about to go for her first day of college, caught unawares first thing in the morning.
The shelves were a shrine to a past that had ceased to mean anything other than a reminder of the transitory and fragile nature of life. These had been treasured memories that her father had surrounded himself with, yet now they were hollow ghosts inhabiting empty rooms.
That her sister had never bothered to come to New York to help Tess said more than any words she could have uttered. She’d been in a huge rush to collect her half of the inheritance, but found endless excuses not to make it out, leaving it to Tess to clean up the mess and deal with the phantoms of the past.
Tess felt a swell of resentment in her chest and shook if off. The sale of the apartment was the last item on her list, and after that, she’d limit her contact with Chrissy to an annual phone call. For now, she needed to concentrate on the job at hand – arranging for the cleaning and sale of the apartment. She’d been assured it would be a fast and easy affair, with the market at its all-time high and demand stronger than at any time in recent memory.
Tess made notes in the file as she walked through the rooms, identifying items she wanted to keep, most of it destined for charity. It wasn’t th
at she didn’t value her father’s possessions so much as each made the pain of his absence immediate and undeniable, and she knew that it would likely be that way forever. She’d been able to trick herself for a while into being too occupied by circumstance to dwell on her father’s death; but now, back in New York, in his most private of places, she couldn’t pretend any longer, and she felt like a white-hot blade was twisting in her stomach.
She finished with the living room and sat in her favorite oversized leather easy chair, staring at the notes she’d made as though they were hieroglyphics. The intercom buzzed like an angry insect, startling her to her feet, and she remembered her appointment with the realtor who’d been highly recommended by her attorney.
Tess moved to the hallway speaker and pressed a button. “Yes?”
“Claire Simons is on her way up, as you instructed,” Steven said.
“Perfect. Thanks, Steven.”
“Welcome.”
Moments later a sharp rap at the front door sounded through the room, and Tess hurried to the entry and opened it. A short woman with steel gray hair and the efficient look of a hard-nosed Manhattan realtor nodded to her with a slight smile. “Tess Gideon? Claire Simons. Pleased to meet you.”
“Yes, Claire. Please, come in. I was just going through things…”
“Thanks. How many bedrooms?”
“Three.”
“Square footage?”
“Oh, I think it’s about sixteen hundred or so. Not huge.”
“Let’s look around, shall we?” Claire said, and without waiting for an answer, walked to the kitchen and surveyed it with a practiced eye while Tess waited. Five minutes later Claire was finished and took a seat across from Tess, an earnest expression in place.
“We should ask two seven. You’ll get two five. It’ll take maybe a month, maybe less. Be better if it was unfurnished when I showed it, and probably could use a handyman to fix a few details. But overall, the location, time of year, and demand are in your favor,” she said.
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